


Bad Ritual

by PerpetuallyPerplexed



Category: Gintama
Genre: (Please Read Chapter Notes For Additional Warnings), AU, Angst, F/M, M/M, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Self-Harm, Slow Build, Slow To Update, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4954528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetuallyPerplexed/pseuds/PerpetuallyPerplexed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d had authority and self control. Had the respect of his peers. Had the knowledge that he’d done all he could to protect the woman he loved and make her happy. He’d had all these things until, one by one, he didn’t anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Storm Before The Calm

**Author's Note:**

> Very short first chapter/prelude. Brief allusion to non-con (not main characters). Self harm and blood mention.

-x-

Two days in hospital. Two weeks of compulsory leave and counselling. Two days at an internal hearing. And two months under probationary light office work.

On his first night back on patrol he punched a guy’s face in for purse snatching. They let him away with it and he was grateful he didn’t have to sit through another internal hearing. He wasn’t grateful for the pity and concern in his superiors’ eyes.

-x-

Kondo had asked once about the bandages on his hands. He’d lied and said he was doing a lot of sparring at the gym. He knew he didn’t believe him.

They woke him most nights. Once, twice, sometimes more. In his dreams the man grinned at him while Hijikata brought his fists down again and again to no effect, the man just grinned and Hijikata continued to deliver strike after ineffectual strike. He felt no pain.

He stood over the sink and rinsed away the sweat, then drove his fist into the cinder block wall beside the mirror, smiled at the pain, and was satisfied when his bloodied knuckles painted the wall, temporarily erasing the feeling of weakness. He wiped down the wall, treated and rebandaged his fingers, he went back to bed, ritual complete.

-x-

It was a weeknight. He was drunk. He’d seen the man spike the drink as he handed it to her. Had watched him escort her away, had listened to the man laughing about how his friend couldn’t hold her drink while the barman and security let them leave and did nothing. He followed a moment later and found them in a side street, the girl sprawled on the hood of a parked car, the man with his hands at his belt. He hit him. He hit him again and again, until a passerby called the police.

They put him in a cell to sober up and Kondo was called. Humiliated and hazed by alcohol Hjikata hit the cell wall until both fists were covered in blood, his own this time. The pain was sobering and satisfying, as were the warm, sticky trails that ran down his hands and forearms as he sat on the cot clenching and unclenching, forcing more blood to drip from his lacerated knuckles.

-x-

48 hours in a locked ward under observation. One week on the psych ward, during which a two-day judicial court hearing was held while he remained in a hospital bed under chemical restraint, kept in his hospital room deep in a drug induced apathy that was not his own.

-x-

“Tosshi, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you earlier.” Kondo’s voice is choked and there’s genuine regret in his tone. Of course there is.

Hijikata doesn’t respond and looks blankly at the brochures in his hands, Rising Fields Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre, read bold, glossy letters.

“Of course it’s entirely voluntary, but if you stay for a minimum of three months they’ve agreed to reassess your condition, and if you show genuine progress they may allow you to maintain your rank!” Kondo smiles at him, but his face falls again when Hijikata remains unresponsive. He wishes he could offer Kondo the kind of reaction he’s looking for. His gratitude, his enthusiasm, his emotions, are out of reach, like the highest shelf of a cupboard where all the things he hardly ever uses anymore are kept, and even when he wants them he can’t find a chair to stand on.

“I’m sorry I failed you after..." Kondo's voice falters. "After Mitsuba.”

A jar falls from the metaphorical shelf and shatters, spilling its contents. Hijikata clenches the paper in his hands, eyes hidden under dark hair. “You aren’t the one that failed.”

He’s glad he can’t reach the shelf.

-x-


	2. Against Privacy

-x-

It’s looks like a university. It must be expensive.

The grounds and buildings are immaculate, and the resemblance to a university is perpetuated by the administrator giving them the tour who keeps referring to it as ‘the campus’, as she tells them cheerfully about the hospital which apparently boasts independent units, a gym, and even a small shopping center. Hijikata keeps thinking how futile it is to be shown all this when he will have to spend most of his time in one main building, which their guide refers to as ‘the main block’, until he is granted the _privilege_ of walking the full grounds and the possibility of using these facilities.

The main block is the well maintained original hospital building. In the black and white photographs at the reception, it looks every bit the stereotypical loony bin, complete with dead eyed, pyjama clad ‘inmates’ and severe looking nurses, while the polished brass inscription on the frame read, ‘Rising Fields Lunatic Asylum, 1933’. Today it feels more like a stately but clinically sterile hotel. The facility manager – a woman who looks old and stern enough to have been one of the grey faced nurses in the photographs – greets them at the front desk. Otose is her name. She smells like cigarettes and Hijikata’s fingers twitch, dying for a smoke. “I’ll leave you to fill in the paperwork” she says, “and when you’re done I’ll get one of the aids to show you to your room.”

Hijikata fills in, ticks, and signs his name in what feels like endless boxes. Disclaimers, rights, responsibilities and liabilities, he reads them all thoroughly (and is relieved to see that smoking is allowed in designated areas), while Kondo merely flips to and signs the sections of his next-of-kin form that have been marked for convenience with brightly coloured tags.

The aid that shows them to the room where Hijikata expects to spend the next three months is softly spoken with a kind smile. She indicates the closet where he can unpack his bags and runs over the monitoring procedures, he already read them in the paperwork he just filled out but he lets her continue for Kondo’s benefit and shakes his head politely when she asks if there’s anything else he’d like clarified. She leaves them, reminding Hijikata that she or another aid will stop past again in thirty minutes to check how he’s doing.

He can tell Kondo is pleased with the place and he does his best to appear positive for him. “I think it’ll be great Tosshi! It’s like going on a three month, all expenses paid vacation!”

Hijikata scoffs under his breath, “Yeah except for the medication, lack of doors, and being checked on every thirty minutes.” He knows Kondo’s just trying to make him feel better about it but he can’t help it.

“And soon they’ll let you start going out on weekends!” Kondo carries on, ignoring his comments. Hijikata doesn’t bother saying that he could leave whenever he likes, he knows he wouldn’t do it anyway. His job and his routine were all he had, and as he was finding out, he’d do anything to get that back, even if it meant admitting that he had a problem.

-x-

After Kondo leaves, Hjikata unpacks his bags, putting what few possessions he’d brought with him into the draws and closet provided. When he’s done, he takes a seat on his bed and stares blankly at a book Kondo had lent him until one of the aids on their thirty-minute rounds tells him it’s time for dinner. 

-x-

Dinner is served to him by the pleasant faced aid that had shown him to his room earlier, he reads her name badge this time, 'Tama', it says. The meal itself is uninspiring but not awful so Hijikata clears his plate but he doesn’t bother going back for seconds. Around him the other patients are complaining about the meal, apparently stroganoff night is not one that many of them look forward to.

He sits alone, or as alone as he can get, at one of the common dining tables where they’re required to eat. He’d prefer to eat alone in his room but apparently that’s one of the many liberties one sacrifices in this place, but looking at the emaciated forms of a few of the people around him he can understand why they’d want to monitor their eating. He’s become fairly effective at isolating himself in a room full of people and he puts these skills to good use as he takes in his surroundings.

The room isn’t large and there are fewer people here than he’d imagined there might be. Between twenty and thirty, he guesses, although he’s not sure if there are other dining areas or whether there are other people who are simply absent tonight. There’s a middle aged man sitting a couple of places away from him who keeps looking in Hijikata’s direction as though he wants to talk to him. Hijikata does his best to increase the intensity of the fuck-off vibes he’s trying to emit and it seems successful as the man holds his tongue despite continuing to giving him sideways glances from behind his sunglasses.

At a nearby table two young women are engaged in a loud argument, he can’t hear what it’s about but figures it can’t be serious since none of the aids are intervening. They stop when dessert is announced and return to their seats appearing perfectly amicable, he figures they must be friends. He’s not a fond of sweets so he forgoes dessert. Medication will be issued soon. Knowing this, and given that no one has bothered him yet he decides to remain in his seat. They’re called one by one to the nurses’ station and issued with a personalised cocktail of pharmaceuticals, when his name is called Hijikata receives his prescription of mood stabilisers, mild sedatives and hypnotics, before making his way back to his bedroom.

Sitting at his desk, he opens the book again but he’s having trouble focusing on the page so quickly looses interest. He picks up his cell phone and reads a text from Kondo telling him that he’d gotten home safe and wish him a good night, he types out a quick reply and turns his phone off for the night. With nothing else to do he paces for a while, dreading the moment his sleeping meds kick in and he’ll have to face tonight's crop of repressed memories.

While he was feeling, on the whole, less anxious, less easily aggravated, and more physically rested since they’d forced him to start taking the medication, he was still, if not more, mentally drained. Each night he was visited by dreams from which he was unable to rouse himself no matter how unpleasant. Where previously he had woken, now he remained trapped amidst memories and feelings he’d rather avoid, until the morning came and the diminishing effect of the drugs allowed him to rouse himself.

He’d have refrained from taking them if he wasn’t being monitored, but since he is, he’s decided he won’t risk it, his future depends on his cooperation with the treatment. Although the sedatives suppressed the urge somewhat, he wished he were allowed to do something more physical than simply pace the perimeter of his room. He longed to go to the gym he had been shown earlier that day, to make use of a punching bag and let the adrenaline rather than medication take the edge off his nerves. But that was a privilege he had yet to earn and he had the feeling that his doctor would rather he left his anger management to the drugs that had been prescribed to him.

Already he was beginning to feel lethargic, but he resisted sleep a little longer, for as long as he could, before changing behind the privacy screen into his pyjamas. As he climbed into bed with heavy limbs, he mumbled an acknowledgement to the night aid that had poked his head unobtrusively through the empty doorframe to check up on him. He turned toward the wall and pulled the sheets up over his head both in an attempt to increase his privacy and to obscure the light from the hallway that irritated him, flickering occasionally. He’d try to remember to mention it to the staff tomorrow. 

-x-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much happened sorry. I promise something will actually happen next time ok!
> 
> Songspiration: Cold War Kids, 'Against Privacy'

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration: 'Bad Ritual', by Timber Timbre. Do yourself a favour and go listen to it!


End file.
